ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT MESH ELEMENT TYPES IN FEA ON A WIND TURBINE SUPPORT STRUCTURE.

The wind energy generation sector has gained prominence in a world thatis increasingly seeking alternatives to polluting forms of energy. Offshore wind farmshave grown in popularity due to technological advances that ensure increasingly safeinstallations. Numerical analyses using the finite element method for these structuresare prone to high computational costs, partly due to the geometric complexity of themodel and the dimensions of the model, which lead to the generation of very densemeshes, as well as the time and memory invested in the analysis. For this reason, it isimportant to investigate simplifications in modelling to reduce computational costs. Thiswork presents a comparative study of the structural analysis of an offshore supportstructure using two different types of elements: beam and shell. The structure used onthis study was a jacket-type wind tower support, and the models were simulated usingthe software Ansys. Finally, the results obtained by the different types of elementsremained close.